Green Building Advisor had an interesting post about a new ventilation strategy for homes with central returns or other HVAC system problems.
The product is an interior door that has free area built into the door itself, while engineering to reduce the amount of sound transmission. The door has an equivalent open area of 100 square inches. So it will be able to handle imbalances that are too big for a simple door undercutting.
The door will cost more than a tradition interior door. But we've all come across that rare room that has no real wall space facing the main body of the house. This door might help reduce pressure imbalances to more acceptable levels.
The door will be going into production soon.
This is a little late, but the updated Investor Owned Utility, etc. fuel costs have been updated as follows:
$/kWh
Duke: $0.141
I&M: $0.112
IPL: $0.100
Vectren: $0.217
NIPSCO: $0.147
$/Mcf
Vectren: $10.11
NIPSCO: $7.34
Citizens Energy Group: $10.72
The 'average' weatherization home has been updated to reflect the more recent billing analysis report. The average home is assumed to use 942 therms and 9,452 kWh annually. All the other assumptions remain the same.
Many thanks to the Weatherizers who helped with this year's Share the Warmth program. Over $191,000 was spent on 94 homes weatherized between January and September. The $191,000 from Share the Warmth was helped by over $422,000 of additional weatherization funds to weatherize those homes.
Some quick program facts:
- 54 unsafe furnaces were replaced with new, more efficient ones.
- Seven gas cook stoves were repaired, another four were replaced to help reduce high carbon monoxide production.
- 20 damaged or unsafe water heaters were replaced.
- Enough air sealing was done to patch a single 133 sqft hole. Think the size of a two car garage door...
- Nearly 53,000 sqft of attic insulation was installed. More than enough to cover 11 basketball courts in a warm coating of cellulose.
- Over 25,000 sqft of wall insulation was installed. That is as big as seven IMAX movie theater screens.
- Enough pipe wrap was installed to stretch from end zone to end zone of a football field.
Finally, a brief breakdown of what was spent where:
I'm hopeful there will be a similar program beginning early in 2015. Thank you all for your help!
Updated to reflect corrected number of homes completed in the program.
Any Indiana weatherization program managers stumbling upon this post, I've got good news. Well, news at the very least.
Pre-weatherization consumption data has been uploaded for over 40,000 EAP clients who are also Vectren or NIPSCO customers. Which means most programs will have some pre-weatherization normalized annual consumption (Pre NAC) showing up when they look at their wait lists.
Pre NAC is also on display in the Wait List search tool (although in a slightly less functional format, no sorting here).
It's only taken over a decade, but there is finally pre-Wx consumption information at your (somewhat easy) disposal. Sorry for the delay. Feel free to send any feedback my or IHCDA's way...
The 2011-2012 Billing Analysis report has been released. Some of the highlights/key stats:
- Indiana's net natural gas savings was 163 therms (+/- 6 therms), a savings of 15.4%, (+/- .6%).
- WICAA's weatherization program in Brazil, IN had the highest net natural gas savings, averaging 338 therms in net natural gas savings, a reduction of 33%.
- The average total electric home saved about 1,500 kWh after being weatherized.
- The average 'local burn' home (a home heated with natural gas, lp gas, fuel oil, wood, something burned on the premise to create heat, you get the point...) saved an average of 776 kWh if it has some manner of air conditioning. If the house had no air conditioning, a local burn home saved an average of 519 kWh after being weatherized.
Those results are based on the actual energy consumption of over 1,800 weatherized homes and nearly 4,800 energy assistance clients.
We are past the halfway point for this year's Share the Warmth program. The next major deadline is at the beginning of July. Of the $191,000+ in the program just under $80,000 has been reimbursed. As of this weekend the reimbursements are as follows:
Those providers that were unable to meet the first benchmark have had those funds reallocated. I will be approaching other providers shortly about receiving reallocated funds. As is plain to see, I'll be expecting lots of claims over the next month. It is important that the administrative costs have the proper backup documentation and are submitted by July 1st as well. Given that there is often a time lag between the job being completed and everything getting properly entered into your fiscal software, getting the claim process started earlier will help.
Below is a close up showing the reimbursements to date, focusing on the individual providers.
We are nearing the half way point of AEP's Health & Safety Repair program. I haven't done this with any other weatherization assistance utility funded program. But I thought it might be helpful to see some pictures or different colored lines to communicate how much has been reimbursed for the program.
As of this weekend:
Now, for what matters going forward:
Please excuse the funky image quality. They look ok on the computer screen, but after being pulled onto the site, they look rather dingy. We're a little under halfway in the program and have reimbursed nearly half of the program's total funds. There are still lots of funds to put to use, but quite a bit of time to do it in. However, the majority of the funds remaining to be spent are in the hands of those providers that haven't claimed much since early February.
